Find the Cure

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Arthur: What do we do now? The Tick: Well, we find the vegetable villain who did this to me and get the antidote! Arthur: There's an antidote? The Tick: Villains always have antidotes... They're funny that way.

One of the characters gets poisoned or sick, and there's a very rare cure for them. May be ldone by the villain, who will oppose the remaining heroes in getting the antidote, or else is blackmailing the heroes into doing something for them. In which case the villain will usually be Carrying the Antidote.

Not quite a Death Trap on the part of the villain, but related in being needlessly complicated. If they were able to inject someone with a poison that's curable with a MacGuffin, why didn't they just use an instantly lethal means or use it on the heroes before? A bullet instead of a dart, or a poison that would instantly kill someone? One answer suggests that in this one situation, they aren't Genre Blind: a bullet would miss while a dart wouldn't. Another has the villain deliberately not killing the target; he or she wouldn't mind if the target dies, of course, but it's more important to have the heroes busy looking for or getting the cure while the Master Plan unfolds.

Examples:

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Anime & Manga

The crew of the Space Battleship Yamato had a year to reach a planet on the other side of the galaxy, get a device that would decontaminate an otherwise radiation-poisoned Earth, and get back to use it, before Earth became permanently uninhabitable.

The Moxibustion Arc in the manga/anime Ranma ˝. The wicked Happōsai hits Ranma with the Weakness Moxibustion, which makes the strongest man as weak as a toddler. They discover that Happōsai has the ancient scroll with the cure and spend the entire arc training to fight him to get the chart.

Whenever Ranma finds out about something that might cure his curse. Of course, Failure Is the Only Option, so every time a cure for the curse is found, it either doesn't work or is lost before it can be used.

Subverted to tragic effect in One Piece; Chopper risks his life to find a mushroom which he believed was a panacea that would cure his mentor's illness. However, he was mistaken and it was actually a highly poisonous mushroom... which his mentor proceeded to eat, grinning, knowing its nature.

Guts's current quest in Berserk has him seeking Puck's home world of Elfhelm in hopes that the King can cure Casca's post-Eclipse insanity.

Pokémon: During the Orange Islands arc, Ash and Tracey fell victim to a Vileplume's Stun Spore, and Misty had to go out to find a cure for the resulting paralysis. In the same episode, Jessie also fell victim to the same Vileplume's Stun Spore, leaving James and Meowth to find the same cure as Misty.

At the end of the XY arc's Mega Evolution specials, a Chespin belonging to Mairin, the deuteragonist, falls into a coma. Alain, the protagonist, had previously told Mairin to stay away from him and blames himself for her Chespin's condition. He resolves to find a cure, which leads up to his appearance in the main anime.

Used in Pet Shop of Horrors, when Totetsu is shot and Leon must find Count D to learn what type of blood is needed for a transfusion. All is put well in the end, when D's father secretly comes to see the animal and tells the doctors what sort of blood to use.

In Axis Powers Hetalia, Spain gets sick because of his economic problems and his ex-pupil Romano searches for a cure, even recurring to The Mafia for help. When he returns, though, Spain's economy is better so he's healthy.

Done again in "Genesis", where Ruuji must track down a rare flower to cure Rei Mii after she comes down with an illness.

In Detective Conan, Conan is trying to find the poison he was given, because if he finds a sample, The Professor living next door might be able to make a cure. A character who shows up later and is the creator of said poison is also working on a cure, but unfortunately she lost most of her research and thus doesn't have a lot to go on.

In Monster Rancher, Holly gets sick from Black Worm poison due to Taking the Bullet for Tiger. Hare knows the cure is Natsume Berries but doesn't know where to find them, so Tiger goes off to search by himself. Captain Black Worm ambushes Tiger where the berries grow while the other heroes hide from the Black Worm subordinates.

Comics

Used on Spider-Man by the Hobgoblin back in the late eighties or early nineties. The Hobgoblin doesn't just shoot himbecause he wants Spidey to give him the Green Goblin's journals. Played with, in that the Hobgoblin doesn't have the antidote — but Spidey gets it from the Kingpin in exchange for help dealing with Hobgoblin (who is a rogue element in Fisk's plans).

Doctor Strange occasionally needs to find a magical cure for an ailment that is beyond modern medicine. The Oath and Spider-Man: Fever both involve his attempts to save the lives of Wong and Spider-Man, respectively.

Used in ElfQuest when Skywise has to find some Whistling Leaves (a diuretic) to help cure Cutter's fever. He only finds the leaves in the end due to a small breeze which causes the leaves to give out the whistling sound they were named for thus guiding him to the plant.

In All Superheroes Must Die, Cutthroat is injected with 90s and goes through a frantic search for an antidote to avoid exploding.

Fan Works

Played five times in the WALL-E Forum Role Play. Thrice by Buddy, first by attempting to kill Auto (and as many other robots as would likely be infected, since they were expendable to his cause) and then by blackmailing the Colony to Auto scrapped; once by Blacklight, who wanted to wipe mankind off Earth to rescue the robots; and once when the remains of the Black Plague virus actually became sentient.

In the Star Wars fic Not Without You By My Side, Leia is bitten by a tropical insect during an off-world visit. There's only one rare strain of bacta the infection responds to, so Luke and Lando Calrassian have to make a trip to Coruscant's shady lower levels to get the stuff from one of Han's smuggler buddies.

Films — Animation

Pretty much the whole plot of Once Upon a Forest. A little badger named Michelle becomes comatose after inhaling toxic gas so her three older friends must travel beyond the forest to find the herbs she needs to be cured.

In The Land Before Time IV, Grandpa Longneck is stricken with an unspecified illness, requiring Littlefoot and his friends to track down a specific type of flower that contains a cure.

In Barbie: Mariposa, Mariposa, Rayna, and Rayla journey to find an antidote for the the poisoned Queen, Marabella.

Zoo Topia: In this film, rabbit police officer Judy Hopps is tasked with finding several predator animals who have strangely went back to their feral and savage ways and she must also find those responsible for causing these predators to go missing. This is a subverted case as the reason why such predators were going savage was not revealed until the near end of the film as the reason was due to the fact was that all of those predators were poisoned by a serum produced by flowers called night howlers and the poison caused them to go savage in the first place. An antidote was not produced until the film's villain and mastermind of the poisoning, Dawn Bellwether was defeated and arrested for her crimes.

The Riftwar Cycle novel Silverthorn has this as the major plot, when the protagonist must quest for the plant of the title in order to cure a princess who was struck down with a poison made from the very same plant.

Biblical Apocrypha has the Book of Tobit, where a young man named Tobias must go search for a cure for his blind dad Tobit. His travel companion happens to be the Archangel Raphael in disguise, and while Tobias searches for both Tobit's cure and falls for a girl named Sarah, Raphael fights a demon that keeps killing every man poor Sarah has married before getting together with Tobias.

In Empire of Ivory, once Temeraire proves immune to the Incurable Cough of Death that is killing the rest of Britain's dragons, there is a scramble to Cape Colony in the hops of finding what cured him of the cold that it was initially dismissed as. Too bad a cave full of the mushrooms in question happened to be under cultivation by a Hidden Dragon Empire.

In Ryan Graff's The Fires of Affliction, the Mystery Cult repeatedly poisons, then cures, the heroine Lori as a way of preventing her from escaping their grasp. When she finally breaks out and meets the hero, he scrambles for another way to cure her.

Also played with, in that while the cure that Addie ultimately found would have worked just fine, she also inadvertently found the "real" cure, which everyone in the kingdom had been searching for — by being a "coward who found courage", Addie caused rain to fall all over the land. The rain came from the home of the fairies and cured everyone of the disease.

Juliet Marillier's Heart's Blood: After Anluan is poisoned, Caitrin must find the antidote and brew it without knowing what kind of poison it is or where the antidote is written, all in less than an hour.

The first book of The Elenium centres a search for the only thing that can cure the poison that the Queen has been poisoned with. In the villain's defence, he had to make it look natural, so instantly lethal means was out of the question, and he could not have anticipated either the magic that kept her alive long enough for the cure to be found, nor that there actually was a cure that could be found.

During The Mallorean Zakath is given a poison that has no known antidote. Her the search is relatively short, only a chapter, as they consult Cyradis who tells them the only cure is the panacea, quickly identified as Adara's rose.

A large portion of the Warrior Cats novel Long Shadows deals with Jayfeather trying to find catnip to cure a recent epidemic in his clan after his stock was destroyed. Also, in the Adventure Game included with The Fourth Apprentice, the Clans are coming down with a sickness, so they send out the Adventure Game cats to find some herbs for them.

The villain of Galaxy of Fear: The Planet Plague didn't know of a cure and just wanted Tash to transform into aBlob Monster. But he got this virus from the ruins of an old civilization, and said civilization also wrote down how it could be cured. The heroes were fortunate not only to find that, but to have a droid find it so it could be recorded.

Doubly subverted in Septimus Heap: Physik: Queen Etheldredda is actually trying to lure Septimus into a trap so she can extort Jenna to bring him to a place where he is kindapped into a time 500 years ago, but there he does find the cure for the Sickenesse that is ravaging the Castle in the present time.

Used twice in The Lord of the Rings with the Athelas plant (also known as Kingsfoil) which it seems only Aragorn knows how to use as more than a simple headache remedy. The first time, he uses it to help relieve the pain of Frodo's wound from a Morgul-knife and the second time to cure those who have been afflicted by "The Black Breath", spread by the Nazgûl. Both times, the plant has to be sought out since there is none at hand when it's needed.

Often appears as part of the mindgames played by Butler Parker. You got hit with a blowgun dart? The nice old man tells you to consider your chances should the dart be poisoned? He even has a cure, but wants to get some information from you first? If you give in and tell him what he wants to know, he'll probably give you a 'cure' - an antacid or a breath mint. And yes, the dart probably was poisoned after all - with a slow-acting sleeping poison, and once you wake up again, you'll be none the worse for wear...

The second book of The Merlin Saga, The Seven Songs, has Merlin's mother Elen stricken by a slowly-killing death curse, forcing Merlin and his friends to embark on a long, Labors of Hercules-style mission to find the Elixir of Dagda, the only cure.

An example of the second approach occurs in the third-season finale of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, "Graduation Day". Faith shoots Angel with a poisoned arrow; she could easily have hit his heart and dusted him, but she and the Mayor would rather Buffy stay distracted by his illness and eventual, slow, and painful death. Of course, this backfires on Faith when the antidote turns out to be Slayer blood...

Thoroughly subverted by the Babylon 5 episode "Confessions and Lamentations", in which Doctor Franklin spends the entire episode searching for a cure while Delenn tends the plague-stricken Markab people, and the rest of the cast deals with other consequences of the plague. In the end, Franklin races to the quarantine ward with the cure... only to discover a tearful Delenn, who informs him that he's too late: they've all died.

Speaking of B5, the Spin-Off series Crusade was entirely premised on this: the cast was searching for a cure to a plague visited upon Earth by former Shadow minions, which would conveniently lie dormant for five years before killing everyone. (The plan was to set up an audience expectation that the cure would be found in the fifth and final season, then have the cure discovered somewhere around season three and spend the rest of the series fighting a new and greater danger uncovered during the search. All this was rendered moot when the series was canceled before even airing.)

Starsky & Hutch: In the episode "A Coffin for Starsky", Starsky is injected with a poison that will kill him in 24 hours; in this case what they need to find is a sample of the poison so the cure can be created. A less personalized version occurs in "The Plague", in which Hutch is one of the first victims of an incipient epidemic, and Starsky has to track down a hitman with a natural immunity to the disease.

In the Doctor Who serial The Caves of Androzani, the Fifth Doctor is forced to regenerate after he and his companion Peri are poisoned — although he manages to milk the giant Queen-Bat to get the antidote (don't ask), there's only enough for one.

Much of "The Green Death" is devoted to finding the eponymous infection. The Improbable Antidote turns out to be the dried spores of the fungus Professor Jones was working on.

NCIS: The team spends the episode "SWAK" looking for a cure for Tony, who's been dosed with a designer version of The Black Death. Subverted in that, although the virus has a limited life, there is no actual cure — Tony has to survive on his own.

In the Alias episode "Counteragent," Sydney needs an antidote to a virus that is killing Vaughn. Sark says she can have it if she brings him Sloane.

In Merlin, Arthur goes on one of these after Merlin takes a poisoned chalice originally meant for him.

Happens twice to Aeryn in Farscape: first when she needs a tissue transplant in Season 1 so the team has to infiltrate a Peacekeeper base and again in Season 4 when she is infected with the "Living Death" by an enemy who possesses the only cure.

In Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Section 31 creates a disease designed to annihilate the Founders in order to bring down the Dominion and end the war. In order to transmit the disease to the Founders, they use Odo as a carrier. This leads to three episodes of this for Dr. Bashir, with "Extreme Measures" being the embodiment of this trope.

Subverted in "The Quickening." Bashir comes to the aid of a planet that was infected with a plague two centuries ago by the Jem'Hadar, expecting to swoop in with his genius and his gadgets and save the day with another miracle of 24th century Starfleet medicine. It doesn't work out that way. It turns out the disease was designed to accelerate when exposed to electro-magnetic fields such as produced by modern medical equipment, which a wave of patients in mortal agony pleading for euthanasia. However, Bashir was able to accidentally create a in vitro vaccine to enable babies to be born free of the plague. Although the planets population and Commander Sisko tell Dr. Bashir that this was a great accomplishment, he is hardly satisfied.

In one episode of the live action Zorro, Zorro is poisoned by the villain of the week. He later tricks the villain into thinking that Zorro had poisoned him back with the same toxin, making him go to the nearest source of an antidote, which Zorro followed him to.

Chuck has this in the season 4 finale when Sarah is poisoned by Vivian Volkoff on the eve of their wedding and Chuck has to find a cure.

On The X-Files, Mulder desperately searching for a cure for Scully's cancer makes up the episodes of "Redux" and "Redux II." He does.

One episode of Castle hit Castle with a poison that led to this, but justified: the villain didn't even know Castle existed, let alone that he'd been hit with the poison. The actual target of the poison was killed almost immediately by it, Castle just got a low dose of it accidentally (enough to kill him, just not as immediately) by being in the same car with the victim for a few minutes.

This is an important part of the plot in The Julekalender. Gammel Nok is dying because the music box that plays the melody of his life is about to stop. The main characters Fritz, Hansi and Günther have to look for the only key that can wind up this music box.

In the episode "Poison Ivy" of the 1991 series Tropical Heat, private investigator Nick Slaughter is poisoned and spends the rest of the episode trying to get his hands on the cure.

A major portion falls under this (specifically the arc called Bionicle Legends): two parts were dedicated to finding the MacGuffin that could save Mata Nui's life, and the third revolved around restoring him to consciousness.

There was also a smaller-scale one in the book "Maze of Shadows", where the plant monster Karzahni forces the Toa Metru to get him a flask of energized protodermis in exchange for curing Nokama of poison — and to prove he could do it, he gave her a temporary antidote. It turned out that Karzahni needed to Find The Cure for a condition of its own, but too bad protodermis has Unpredictable Results...

Video Games

Chrono Cross: Early on, Kid is poisoned by Hydra Venom, which requires Hydra Humor to cure. Problem being, the hydras are extinct in this dimension. You can choose not to fetch it—she'll be cured by a strange from the mainland anyway Norris and not commit an act of ecological vandalism, but it mostly depends on which characters you want to join you.

In Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga, Mario wins a game at an arcade and obtains a strange mushroom as the prize. He eats it and becomes inflicted with a disease called Bean Fever, which makes whoever has it slowly turn into a bean, and Luigi has to go to some ancient ruins to find Crabbie Grass, the only known cure.

In Final Fantasy IV, Rosa comes down with a sickness that can only be cured by the secretions of a rare desert arthropod. This happens to another character in The After Years.

Inverted in Final Fantasy V, as in a flashback you learn that a mother of a character had a disease which could only be cure by a dragon's tongue. However, since this would kill the dragon, the character decides not to do it. Played straight on the two occasions the heroes need to find dragon grass to cure sick wind drakes, however: it only grows, in small quantities, on certain remote mountaintops and in one case has mutated into a monster.

In Heretic II the protagonist is infected with The Virus at the beginning of the story and has to find the cure not only for other people but also for himself.

This is the main objective in the Storyline of Mitsumete Knight R : Daibouken Hen : the King of the kingdom the main character serves, is gravely poisoned by a terrorist group, and the only way to cure him is a mysterious MacGuffin called "The Tear of the Star". It's so rare and legendary, nobody actually knows exactly what it looks like. And of course, the main character is sent on a quest to find it.

A side quest in Tales of Symphonia has Raine falling ill from a (completely non-villain caused) disease and the party has to spread out to find the antidote, which turns out to be a rare plant that only grows on the top of a single mountain in the whole world.

The Xchagger Plague subplot in the third installment of Star Control. The victims: The Harika/Yorn. The culprits: unsurprisingly, The Crux.

A major plotline in Batman: Arkham City has Batman seeking to find a cure to the disease killing The Joker because he gave Batman a blood transfusion as well as "donating" his blood to various hospitals in Gotham to ensure Batman's cooperation.

In Blazblue, the ultimate goal of Litchi Faye-Ling is to find a cure that will not just restore her friend Lotte Carmine from Arakune to normal, but also a cure for herself about her encroaching corruption. Unfortunately, the one she knew could help her, Kokonoe, flat out refused, and Hazama claims that NOL has the cure. Litchi was quick enough to realize that it's a Blackmail and Hazama is a very ominous, suspicious dude, but with her time to get completely corrupted drawing even nearer, she ends up Forced into Evil to preserve the cure. By BlazBlue Central Fiction, she actually managed to procure one cure that's guaranteed to be safe to use. Unfortunately, when she managed to confront Lotte about it, he just stated that he actually knew that cure already, and was deliberately not using that cure to stay the way he is, as he has chosen to stay that way. This pretty much rendered everything Litchi did All for Nothing.

Several games in the Resident Evil franchise has you hunting down a cure for someone:

Resident Evil, if you're playing as Jill, has you look for Serum to cure a wounded and poisoned Richard, but he dies whether you get the cure to him on time or not. Richard is already dead by the time Chris finds him. In the remake. If you get the cure to Richard quickly, he will be alive, but he pulls a Heroic Sacrifice later on since he's Doomed by Canon.

In the original game and the remake, if you get poisoned by the giant snake on your first encounter with it, your character slumps over from the poison, causing their partner character to show up and administer a cure.

Resident Evil 2 for Claire's Scenario A has the character developing a vaccine that will stop the G-Virus embryo that was implanted in 10 year old Sherry Birkin. By Resident Evil 6, the embryo within Sherry remains dormant due to the vaccine, but is not eliminated. Instead, Sherry's body adapts to the embryo and it grants her super healing.

Resident Evil 3 has Jill get infected with the T-Virus by Nemesis, which kicks off the quest for the cure by Carlos and he delivers the vaccine on time. The vaccine would cause Jill's body to develop antibodies specifically against the T-Virus and would be an effective cure. Wesker in Resident Evil 5 captures Jill and ues her antibodies against her by implanting a mind controlling device on her chest.

Resident Evil 4 has Leon and Ashley get implanted with the Las Plagas, which will mutate and take control of their bodies if not eliminated on time. Breaking the trend of using a vaccine, the game "cures" the two characters by having them using electrical shocks on each other to kill off the parasite within them.

The Dangi Corporation in the fan mod Marathon Rubicon develop a cure for a virus they made. It was used in a scheme to take over the galaxy by infecting food from various companies which was sent to various planets. They offered the cure in exchange for governmental control. At least, this is what happens if you stay on Pfhor Prime.

In Dark Souls II, the Undead Hero is lured to Drangleic by rumors of a possible cure to the Undead Curse. There is no cure. The rumors were merely the Emerald Herald's bait to bring Undead to Drangleic in hopes of finding someone capable of ending Nashandra and Linking the Fire. At the end of the Lost Crowns DLC trilogy, King Vendrick will bestow a blessing upon all of the crowns that prevents Hollowing as long as they are worn. It's not a cure, but it does remove the only harmful part of the Curse.

The Chosen Undead in the previous game had the same goal and likewise discovered that there was no cure for the Undead Curse. Their only options are to become kindling for the First Flame or let it die and try their hand at ruling a world of Dark.

In the upcoming Bloodborne, the Hunter suffers from the beast plague, which will eventually turn them into a monster. So they journey to the city of Yharnam, supposedly home to a legendary Panacea which could cure the plague. FromSoftware seems to like this trope.

The main plot of The Dog Island is this. The player must travel to The Dog Island to search for a cure for a mysterious and rare sickness that has infected their younger sibling, the cure itself being the Legendary Flower.

In Gems of War, the bulk of the Forest of Thorns quest-line involves Rowanne's attempts to find a cure to the corruption there. It also involves fighting off elves who think looking for a cure is a dead end. In the end, the "cure" does stop Gloom Leaf... by killing him.

Web Comics

The villain Black Sundae poisoned the city's ice cream supply, and Lady Spectra And Sparky had to find him and retrieve the antidote before the city's children succumbed.

Messenger: Eldora's tribe is stricken with a potentially deadly disease. One of the Tribe's elders sends Eldora to find a cure.

Web Original

In The Gamer's Alliance, the elven archer Rhylian is desperately searching for a cure to the Blood Fever, a disease which is fatal to elves.

Western Animation

Both Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoons featured variations of this trope. In the 1987 cartoon episode "Enter the Fly", April was poisoned by inhaling the pollen from the Doku ("poison") plant, which had been sent to her by an "anonymous admirer" (actually The Shredder). The turtles must then search for the Gazai plant, which is the only source of the antidote. In the 2003 series, it occurs when Donatello is infected with the mutagenic virus making its way across New York, which allows Agent Bishop to extort a favor out of them in exchange for a cure — one that he doesn't actually have. Fortunately, the turtles' ally Leatherhead managed to invent one on his own by the time they got back from stealing the relevant MacGuffin.

Gargoyles: "Long Way to Morning" has a flashback of this directly, where the Gargoyles had to recover the antidote to a poison made by an evil wizard who poisoned a prince. In a modern day subversion, Demona thought she poisoned Elisa (but Elisa's hidden badge deflects the dart) and Goliath plays along; if he didn't chase Demona, then she would have realized her attack on Elisa had failed.

Jackie Chan Adventures, episode 9, "The Rock". It makes some sense that the villain has the antidote in this case, as his plan is to to force Jackie into helping him by only giving him the cure if he does what the villain wants.

In the Kim Possible episode "Blush", Drakken doses Kim with a pollen that will make her disappear little by little as she gets embarrassed. Ron goes to find the pollen, which should cure Kim if she gets a second dose.

In "Mission: Imp-Possible", Nefir the imp poisons Aladdin with a sleeping drug in order to goad Genie into helping him find a valuable treasure, the Golden Silk of Panacea (which also happens to be the only cure for the drug).

There's also Iago stealing fancy bath oils intended for the Sultan and thus consuming a poison intended to kill the Sultan that slowly turns him to stone, limb by limb. So of course the others try to get the cure, and Iago just betrays them by giving the Big Bad the lamp in exchange for the cure. Fortunately on the way there he has a change of heart, get captured, gets Aladdin and the rest captured, gets called a traitor and then gets saved by Genie who points out that Iago changed his mind at the last moment and is not to blame. Make up your mind, Iago!

When Genie gets a cold that gives him Power Incontinence, Aladdin and Iago go in search of the Orb of Mackinaw, a cure-all for genies.

Conan the Adventurer does this as an episode. The disease was to make Conan susceptible to the metal in his sword (and his allies' weapons). Ironically, the metal itself would prove to be the cure, although not before the Big Bad was tricking the allies into giving him his weapons to get what turned out to be a non-existent cure, and sending out his minions to destroy a valuable relic (the cloth covering a certain person's body, meant to cure anything) that the allies had just taken, to make sure the Big Bad's route was their only option.

Subverted in the Transformers: Beast Wars episode "The Low Road". An... unfortunate side effect of the virus and its interaction with some wild bean vines is what wins the day for our heroes. Needless to say, it's sort of a self-parody episode of a usually much-more-serious show.

Beast Wars also had a unique take on this in the episode "Gorilla Warfare". The Predacons infected Optimus Prime with a virus designed to make him a coward, planning to ambush the Maximals when they launch an attack to steal the cure. However, incompetent virus creation turned Optimus into a beserker instead, making him tear through the Predacon base singlehandedly.

As the page quote reveals, this happened to The Tick once. At least in his case it was explainable by the fact that the villain spilled his Applied Phlebotinum at him as a last-ditch attempt to dislodge him... Why the villain in question had an antidote to counteract it, less so.

My Little Pony: "The Golden Horseshoes". Said horseshoes are the MacGuffins needed to save a Pony from being erased from existence, so...

In the Hercules The Animated Series episode "Hercules and the Big Lie", Herc tells Icarus he has "Catastrophia" to get away from a geeky comic-scroll convention. The cure is in the backyard of a giant. Icarus goes after it anyway.

In the Legion Of Superheroes cartoon, Brainiac 5 goes hilariously off-the-wall bonkers and needs an ultra-rare ore from Timber Wolf's seriously-ultra-wild-and-dangerous home planet.

The deadly Ecto-Acne from Danny Phantom has main hero Danny looking for the cure after Big Bad Vlad poisoned his friends with the same dose. The big problem: the villain has the illness, too! The forced poisoning was intended as blackmail (which works). Danny eventually finds the final formula (it's diet soda)... right after he traveled through time, subsequently ruined the present time period, leaving him to Set Right What Once Went Wrong. Boy always takes the hard way, no?

The Super Mario Bros. Super Show had a twist: Snake-bitten Mario needed to eat a special antivenom pizza to be cured. They had the ingredients, but no way to cook it; Luigi had to find a fire flower.

The South Park episode "Red Man's Greed", the Native Americans gave SARS to the town using infected blankets to try to get rid of the townspeople to build a highway to their casino. Stan, who wasn't sick, went to search for a cure, which turned out to be Campbell's chicken noodle soup, Day Quil, and Sprite.

In "Tonsil Trouble", Cartman accidentally gets HIV from a blood transfusion following his tonsil removal, and deliberately infects Kyle after being mocked by him. The two of them set out to meet Magic Johnsonnote Cartman believes Magic can help them since Magic has lived for years despite having HIV to find a cure, which turns out to be "about $180,000 shot directly into the bloodstream".

In Wakfu episode 7, Amalia is bitten by a devil rose, and her companions have to find the only existing cure for the poison, a very rare sap from a magical tree, in a forest full of Man Eating Plants.

In Fairly OddParents: In Chicken Poofs, Poof is infected with Chicken Poofs and starts infecting everyone in Dimmsdale with the disease. It only gets worse when chicken-eating birds start hunting the chickens and they end up in the hands of a chicken restaurant owner. Fortunately, Dr. Studwell has the cure...which is stored in a large needle for injection. Poof is unsurprisingly frightened and ends up breaking the needle. As such, Wanda and Dr. Studwell have to travel to a temple to get a cure, which is a flower. However, it turns out that Dr. Studwell was simply getting the flower so that he could get a discount on the cure (which was actually sold at a fairy pharmacy). Also, Studwell was not planning on injecting Poof with a needle but was instead planning on giving him a drink to cure the disease.

Apparently the whole reason the parents of the titular character in Hey Arnold! went missing. Not only do they have to traverse the South American jungle to collect the ingredients of the dreadful Sleeping Sickness, they also have to find the very elusive patients called the Green Eyed People. Note that they do this plot twice... the latter apparently not ending too well.

The plot of first season episode of EwoksTo Save Deej as well as Rainbow Bridge, the very first in the series of comics revolve over a character's life being in danger and other characters finding ingredients for an antidote.

Super Noobs: Memnock and Zenblock in "License To Noob" fall ill to swink eye, a contagious space oriented eye infection that causes blindness, swelling, itching, and discharge in its victims. They task the Noobs to get eye drops for them. This is a subverted case because The Noobs knew where to go to get the drops which are only produced and sold in the beta sector and Memnock and Zenblock couldn't get it themselves because of their blindness. The Noobs get distracted several times also through their irresponsibility with Memnock and Zenblock's space ship and then having to help a princess save her planet from a race of bee like people who all happened to have the same eye infection Mem and Zen had. The antidote itself form the condition is actually purple dust capable of curing those with swink eye within seconds.

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